TBT: Midi Quilts

Continuing my series of Throwback Thursday posts this year about My Tiny Career (yes, I'm almost through, but there are a few months left so it will spill over a bit to next year), today I'm sharing what I'm calling midi quilts. They are a little bigger than the minis I worked on but smaller than most throw quilts. All of the quilts today were ones I quilted for Becky Schaefer in the mid-80's to early 90's. She constructed or reconstructed them from antique materials and then sent them to me for hand quilting. All of these were quilted with off-white cotton thread, for which I was paid by the yard. These photos have all been scanned from my files. I have been working on this project this year to document my work all in one place. If you'd like to read more about my tiny quilt career, click on that label to the right or at the bottom of this post. As usual, I will include what I know of dates, size, and amount of thread used.

I think you could hear my squeal when I opened the package that contained this one. I love it. (And I'm also glad I didn't have to piece it. That would have been challenging for me, for sure.) 

I love the colors and patterns. This one is 38 by 48 inches. The quilting is a little hard to see, but there are stylized flowers in the white patches and outlining on the other sides of the blocks. I finished quilting in January 1986 (perfect time of year for hand quilting on my lap) with 134 1/2 yards of thread. 

Here's the back.

A rather fragile brown print. Brr. It must have been cold. Look at those mittens.

The next one is a log cabin. The interesting thing about this one is that it is bound. I didn't bind quilts for Becky, so I'm thinking that she made it and maybe did some minimal quilting and then sent it to me for more. I know that I marked and quilted the vine border design and perhaps did some of the interior in-the-ditch quilting as well.

Right border is cut off.

I'm uncertain of the exact size. My notes say "20 by 30 inches ?" I finished it in June 1986 with 38 2/3 yards of thread.

The back seems to be a very loose woven stripe.

This Ocean Waves quilt is bigger than the quilts I usually worked on for Becky--44 by 62 inches. 

If you look closely, you can see feather circles in the blue squares/triangles and double lines through the small triangles in concentric squares. This one took 128 1/3 yards of thread. I finished it in March 1987.

The back is a thin, very fragile--almost crispy--peachish-pink print. Many of the quilts I worked on had this or a similar fabric on the back.

I'm including this next quilt here, even though it's much smaller because it's another Ocean Waves. 

This one is only about 15 1/2 inches square. Don't you love the random directions of the striped fabric in these Ocean Wave quilts? Quilting was minimal, with tiny feather stars in the dark squares and triangles (5 1/3 yards of thread). Quilted in August 1989. As typical with these minis, the back was muslin. I'll spare you the photo. There are lots in my previous posts.

This next probably should have been saved for a Christmas post, but here it is:

How about that photo bomb Cabbage Patch Kid? Maybe Faye Marilou (?) wearing Mommy-made clothing.

I quilted this one in December 1986--appropriate month for it! It is mostly crosshatch with some kind of odd leaf or stem designs in the large white areas. I don't think there was any quilting in the border. That may have been an attempt to keep costs reasonable for the quilting. It's 43 inches square, with 105 2/3 yards of quilting thread. 

The back is a loosely woven red/white check.

I have next to no information on the rest of these quilts. Either I forgot to record them or my career was winding down (winding up?) and I was tired of documenting.

Here's another Christmas quilt:

It's approximately 30 inches square. (I could tell from the size of the plaid in the blanket that was under it and cropped out of the picture.) There are hearts in the middles of the blocks,  partial feather circles in the larger white triangles, and some outlining in the rest of each block. 

Fragile pinkish backing:

I guess I could have included this next one in the star quilts post. I really like the use of shirtings in the background. I'm estimating that it's 20 to 24 inches square. I have one note that suggests I used 27 1/2 yards of thread for quilting. I wonder what this pattern is called.

The quilting doesn't show much on the front, but the back reveals hearts in the centers of the stars and concentric "broken" hexagons where outline quilting was done along the longest sides of the light triangles. 

This next one is a little bigger than a mini--I'm guessing about 16 by 20 inches. I don't know the name of this pattern either. Isn't (what you can see of) the quilt holder cute? More hearts in this quilt--where the dark corners come together. Maybe that's the 80's influence? I'm not sure that's authentic for the age of the fabrics in the top. There's also a little outlining in the squares.

Oh, my, the back is a little wrinkled but does show the quilting a bit better.

Here's a brown and pink version of the same pattern. I think it's about 20 inches square. It's quilted the same way as the quilt above. (I included some of the background in this picture because there's a quilt back there that I don't have a photo of. I definitely missed some along the way. It looks like baskets with several different colored borders when I pump up the brightness.) 

There's that fragile backing again.

One more--another one I could have included with the star quilts. It's probably about 16 by 20 inches. You can see more of the cute quilt holder here. The quilting is mostly outlining in the light patches. The stars would have been hard to quilt because of bulky seams.

And yes, more pink backing. (Quilt holder is hiding now.I think she's done with it.)

I have one more set of minis from my quilting career with Becky. I'll share them next time. That's not the end of my career, though. I was selling on consignment by then and doing hand quilting commissions for others as well as commissions of my own quilt creations for a client. I'll also share those over the next few TBTs and then I will (finally) be done with documenting all of my pre-blog quilting. Whew!

I'm linking this up with Andrée from Quilting & Learning What a Combo for Throwback Thursday. (She's subbing in this month for our usual host, Sandra at mmm! quilts. Thanks, Andrée!) So go over there and see what other quilters have unearthed from their pre-blogging days. Better yet, share something you made before you shared your work on social media.

Happy October, and Happy Quilting!

P.S. (Does anyone still use that abbreviation anymore for postscript?) This morning I discovered a few more quilt photos in a shoebox that had never been sorted. Three of them would have been perfect for this post. No time to add them now. I'll add them to one later this year. Sheesh. Maybe my tiny career wasn't so tiny after all. Just the income. Ha!